Anonymous hacker group threatens Israel with ‘cyber-holocaust’

Anonymous has threatened Israel with “the electronic holocaust” which, the group vowed, would “erase it from cyberspace” on April 7 for “crimes” in Palestine. Anonymous planned yet another cyberattack for just over a week before Holocaust Remembrance Day.

There is now just one week left until the attack, dubbed
OpIsrael, that Anonymous declared in its video “message to
Israel” back on March 4.

On the recording, a masked figure in a suit and tie reads a
prepared statement promising to erase Israel from cyberspace for
“crimes in the Palestinian territories.”

The group specifically addresses the Israeli government, saying
that it has not “stopped...endless human right
violations” and “illegal settlements”.

“You killed thousands of people, as in the last war against
Gaza in 2014. You have shown that you do NOT respect
international law,” the electronic voiceover says.

“We are coming back to punish you again,” Anonymous
video vows.

The video message, delivered in English with Arabic subtitles,
displays images from the Gaza conflict, including those showing
the air strikes on the territory during the Israel Defence Forces
Operation Protective Edge last summer.

“As we did many times, we'll take down your servers,
government websites, Israeli military websites, banks, and public
institutions. We’ll erase you from cyber-space as we have every
year, 7 April 2015, will be an electronic holocaust,” it
adds.

Anonymous addressed the youth of Palestine, urging for it to
“never give up”. “We are with you, and will continue to
defend you,” the group vowed.

It then continued with a “message to the foolish Benjamin
Netanyahu, and all leaders in the Zionist entities” warning
that cyber-attacks on Israeli devices, websites and personal data
will continue “until the people of Palestine are free.”

“We always say expect us but you always fail. We are
unexpected; we’ll show on 7 April 2015 what the electronic
holocaust mean…” the voice says.

Anonymous slated its attack just a little over a week before
Holocaust Remembrance Day, known in Israel as Yom HaShoah, which
is marked on April 16.

Speaking to Newsweek magazine, Benjamin T. Decker, a senior
intelligence analyst at Tel Aviv-based risk consultancy The
Levantine Group, said that the Israeli government does not take
Anonymous seriously. He has called the whole electronic holocaust
threat “posturing” saying that over the four years that
the group has carried out OpIsrael, hacking techniques have
become more sophisticated, but there has been less damage caused.

“As the years have progressed we have seen that, despite
their increasing sophistication in hacking techniques, we have
seen less damage against Israeli cyber-infrastructures, largely
due to Israel's pioneering of most cyber-warfare tactics, both
offensive and defensive,” Decker told the magazine.

In April 2013 the hacktivist group claimed that a similar
OpIsrael attack caused $3billion worth of damage to
Israel, when it targeted over 100,000 websites, 40,000 Facebook
pages, 5,000 Twitter accounts and 30,000 Israeli bank accounts.

The government, however, said that there were no major
disruptions.

The past summer alone, Anonymous targeted Israel several times
protesting Israel’s military incursion in Gaza.

In a wave of attacks against Israeli government websites it took
down “hundreds” of websites portals, including those of
Mossad and the IDF. Most of the attacks were repelled within a
few hours.

Anonymous generally uses DDOS (distributed denial of service
attacks) that overload a website with fake requests, making it
unavailable for legitimate users.

Israel has been severely criticized for its political decisions
amid the 2014 war in Gaza, which claimed the lives of more than
2,140 Palestinians – most of them civilians – and over 70
Israelis, many of whom were soldiers. The conflict ended with a
truce between Israel and Hamas on August 26.

Anonymous launched its first OpIsrael cyber-attacks in November
2012 during Operation Pillar of Defense, an eight day Israeli
Defense Force (IDF) incursion into the Gaza strip.

Back then some 700 Israeli website suffered repeated DDOS
attacks, which targeted high-profile government systems such as
the Foreign Ministry, the Bank of Jerusalem, the Israeli Defense
Ministry, the IDF blog, and the Israeli President’s official
website.

The Israeli Finance Ministry reported an estimated 44 million
unique attacks on government websites over a four day period.